Thursday, October 20, 2011

As I was looking through some fashion magazines from this year and cutting shoe pictures for later reference, I got several new ideas. One of them came from this picture of a Prada shoe. I rarely make replicas, so the basic construction is from this, but I used black leather and the fabric I used for Monster High doll shoes earlier.I started by cutting the toe parts from cork. I used leftover pieces from the cork board I used for the dollhouse front wall, so it was too coarse to be used as such, but was fine for this as it was going to be covered in thick leather. The heels are cut from a round wooden stick. Getting the right angle on the top was tricky as a mitre box is meant for cutting in 45 degree angle, which would have been too steep. So, I had to keep the piece of wood in angle in the mitre box during sawing.I covered the pieces with leather. The pieces of leather in the top and bottom of the cork parts are there to help keep the soles even.The insoles have two layers of cardboard and one of leather. The outer soles have three layers of cardboard with leather strips glued to the sides and leftover pieces glued to the top and bottom. The cardboard in the insoles will take care of small unevenness, but without the leftover pieces in the middle of the outer soles, the center part of the insoles would be lower than the edges when the soles are glued together.The straps are glued in place here. They consist of leather strips covered with fabric (the fabric was too thin to use alone). The leather parts do not go under the insoles, just the fabric. Leather is too thick and would make the insoles bumpy.Here are the parts so far. The parts that go behind the heel are made of leather and one layer of cardboard. The reason for using cardboard is that it keeps the parts in correct shape when you glue the fabric in place.Next, I glued the cork parts to the outer soles and covered the heel parts with fabric. The light colored leather pieces shown beside them are the innermost pieces that will cover the flaps of glued fabric.This closeup shows the construction better. The ankle straps are also in place here and so are the beads that will be used for closing them. The ends of the straps and the thread used to attach the beads will all be hidden under the leather pieces.Here is the upper part of the right shoe almost finished.The same in a side view after gluing the outer sole in place.The loops for closing the ankle straps are made of thin rubber band and glued in place.Almost finished. The parts in the middle are the leather pieces to be glued on the bottom of the outer soles to cover them.The final step was to glue the heels in place. Here are the finished shoes.And finally, the shoes on Miss Piggy's feet.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

I started these over a year ago and managed to finish the cork soles, but then abandoned the project for something else. As I was going through some shoe pictures in fashion magazines, I got inspiration to finish these.

The soles consist of four parts each, the bottom and three vertical parts that form the wedge heel. When cutting the vertical parts, it's best to get the arch correct right from the start. Everything else is easy to carve into the right shape afterwards.Here the heels are glued in place, but not yet carved into correct shape. Also, the bottom parts are a bit too long, but they were left that way on purpose, so it would be easy to get seamless fit with the wedges.Here are the finished soles. As there won't be anything to cover the cork surface, it is important to get the seams as invisible as possible.As I continued the project today, I first made the leather insoles. There was no need to use cardboard as the uppers were not going to go under the insoles.I glued the edges of the uppers to the cork. Basically, you could finish the process here and use the shoes like this. However, I wanted something a bit different this time.These are the parts that go around the ankles. I used 2 mm eylets and glued pieces of leather to the inside to protect the doll's feet from scratches.Here are the ankle parts glued in place.Then I hammered tiny nails to the edges of uppers. These are not necessary, because glue keeps the uppers in place, but I added them for decoration. You need to be careful to get the nails straight or they will come out through the insole or bottom of the cork sole. The shorter the nails are, the better.

Next, I glued pieces of leather to the bottom of the soles and made laces using cotton yarn. The beads in the ends of the laces are for decoration and also to keep the ends hanging down (that looks so much neater).